Nuance

Last year, voice technology giant Nuance quietly acquired VirtuOz, a developer of virtual assistants for online sales, marketing and support — a “Siri for the enterprise” that counted with the likes of PayPal and AT&T as customers. Now, Alexandre Lebrun, the founder and CEO of VirtuOz, has taken a dive back into the startup world to launch Wit.ai, a platform and API that… Read More

Intel has made another international acquisition in its push into artificial intelligence technology: it has bought Indisys, a Spanish startup focused on natural language recognition. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it is reportedly “north” of €20 million ($26 million). It comes just two months after news broke that Intel acquired Omek, an Israeli maker of… Read More

Nuance, a company known for its voice technology, is getting into the advertising business.
It’s launching a new product called Voice Ads, which brings Nuance capabilities to mobile advertising. These are ads that you can actually have a (limited) conversation with, potentially creating a much more interactive and fun advertising experience — which is particularly challenging… Read More

ManageEngine has launched the ServiceDesk Plus iPhone app that incorporates voice-recognition technology for IT professionals so they can make commands, dictate notes and do any number of other tasks that come with managing a help desk. Read More

Amazon today announced that it is acquiring Ivona Software, a Polish-based specialist in voice technologies that competes with Nuance and is already used in the Kindle Fire for services covering text-to-speech, voice commands and “Explore by Touch.” The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read More

TechCrunch has received a copy of a memo indicating that Nuance, the speech and natural language technology giant that also powers Apple’s Siri voice assistant, has made another acquisition: VirtuOz, a developer of intelligent virtual assistant services for online sales, marketing and support — dubbed “Siri for the enterprise” — that was founded in France and is… Read More

Document management provider OfficeDrop has a new capability for voice-activated search that represents just the start in how mobile apps are changing with the advent of natural-language, speech-recognition technology. The service is built on Nuance, the Boston-based company that has developed a speech-recognition service called Nina, which debuted in August. Read More

Looks like Nuance has been up to more than just updating its myriad applications. The company has announced that it will acquire San Jose-based Ditech Networks for $1.45 per share, which works out to a net total of $22.5 million. While the boards of both companies have signed off on the transaction, the deal isn’t expected to close until later this year.
I can’t blame you if… Read More

Nuance, the company that powers a large number of tools that use voice recognition (including Apple’s Siri) launched its own Siri-like voice-powered “virtual assistant” today that developers can add to their mobile apps. The Nuance Interactive Natural Assistant (Nina) uses the company’s speech recognition technologies and combines them with voice biometrics and an… Read More

The future of customer service is less about the people than it is the sound of a person or even the virtual image of an individual.
Humans are just so inefficient. But they can be improved, too, through interfaces that provide them more automated capabilities.
Salefsorce.com is on the edge of this trend. It continues to acquire companies that makes it easier for agents to become more… Read More

Speech recognition giant Nuance has made their share of plays in the mobile space before — they acquired Vlingo last year and pushed out their Dragon Go! voice command app to both iOS and Android.
Their latest mobile endeavor, Dragon ID, is a little different — its main draw is that it’s capable of recognizing distinct voices and using them to authenticate users and… Read More

Nuance has just announced that it is acquiring Transcend, a company that provides medical transcription and speech editing services, for approximately $300 million in cash, or $29.50 per Transcend share.
Nuance, which develops imaging and voice recognition technologies, says that Transcend will help expand its customer base to the healthcare and hospital market. For background, Transcend… Read More

Alltel Wireless, a Little Rock, Ark.-based carrier that serves six states, has today announced that it will use Nuance’s Dragon Voicemail to Text transcription to power its own Voice2Text service.
The service will basically let users read their voicemails straight from their inbox, rather than waiting through voice prompts and having to sit through a message. The beauty is that once… Read More

Today at Intel’s CES 2012 Keynote, the firm announced a strategic partnership with Nuance. If you’ve forgotten, Nuance is a voice recognition company, so yelling at your new ultrabook may be a closer reality than you thought.
You’ll have voice commands for checking in on notifications, and the processing never has to go through the cloud since ultrabooks will provide… Read More

Speech recognition company Nuance (which powers part of Apple’s Siri), is launching its new “Dragon TV” platform today, which will allow consumers to interact with their TV using their voice and natural language. With Dragon TV, you’ll be able to speak channel numbers, station names, plus TV show and movie titles, without having to use structured commands. You’ll… Read More

Textaholics, this one’s for you.
Swype — the Android-flavored keyboard that lets you type (or swype, rather) faster than you ever thought possible — has a present for you this holiday season. With Siri on the iPhone 4S, voice control apps are sprouting up faster than you can ask Siri about the meaning of life. Voice is where we’re headed and there’s nothing… Read More

In what Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan calls a ‘good outcome’ on Twitter, the voice-to-text technology company has just been acquired by speech recognition king Nuance.
Notably, Nuance has repeatedly sued Vlingo over patent infringement – and tried to acquire them – in the past, and Grannan once referred to competing with Nuance as “having a venereal disease that’s… Read More

Looking over the web and especially the blogosphere over the past couple of days, it seems there is only one thing everyone wants to talk about: Siri. With the iPhone 4S now in millions of peoples’ hands, as expected, it’s clearly the stand-out feature of the device.
But wait. Voice technology has been around for a long time. Or, as one TechCrunch commenter succinctly put it… Read More

Swype has been blowing minds since it first launched at TechCrunch 50 back in September of 2008. For those unfamiliar, Swype is the maker of an awesome app that allows users of touchscreen mobile devices to type messages with one swipe of the finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard. The alternative (and patented) input method has proven to be super speedy, allowing data entry at over… Read More

The most talked about element of yesterday’s Apple event had to be Siri. The new feature of the iPhone 4S, born out of Apple’s purchase of the company by the same name in 2010, looks amazing. But one thing never mentioned during the keynote was a key piece of technology behind Siri: Nuance.
We first reported that Siri would be a key part of iOS 5 back in March. As we dug deeper… Read More